


Dirty-Faced Angel

by lq_traintracks (lumosed_quill)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bad Flirting, Draco's shit way of flirting, Flirting, Harry's better way, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy, POV First Person, Unresolved Sexual Tension, this boy is so fucking extra I can't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27121154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosed_quill/pseuds/lq_traintracks
Summary: AU sixth or seventh year, if all they really have to worry about is Quidditch, and one another.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 32
Kudos: 345





	Dirty-Faced Angel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [capitu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitu/gifts).



> Written for the prompt, 'dirty face + angel', given to me by Capitu! Thank you! <3

How do I sometimes catch the Snitch before Potter, you ask? Well, that’s easy. I cheat, of course. This is not an embarrassment to me; this is a honed skill. I’ve stayed awake nights thinking up new ways to do it. Most involve far too much violence for me to actually get away with it. Though people have died during Quidditch matches at Hogwarts before (let’s face it, this school is probably one of the least safe places I can think of—and not just in the case of schools, but anywhere).

Not that I want to kill him. It’s fine if he thinks that. But I truly don’t. I just want to see him… dirty.

It’s worth it… so worth it to drive his broom into the stands with my own. I get to hear his rough little grunt of anger-slash-pain. He’s offended. Which is delightful… that he still has the capacity to expect better from me, to be somehow surprised.

It’s worth it to feel the vibration of his broom careening out of his control, My hand slips onto his broom handle, giving it one last fateful shove, and then I speed off into the sky, catch the golden flicker of light in my palm, fingers strangling its fast wings.

Once I land, I shake off my cheering teammates. (They want to carry me aloft on their shoulders, and if this win were against Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, that would be fine. But I have even better things to do.) The Snitch itself is forgotten in my fervor, my hand loosening and letting it free to wobble back to its trunk or zoom into the treetops; I don’t give a toss.

I saunter over to Potter, still tangled in his broom twigs and what’s left of the rest of his Firebolt Ultra. He’s panting. The sound of it sends a rush of heat over my skin. His hair’s even worse than usual, tousled from where he took his tumble onto the pitch, blades of grass stuck in it and making it look more like a bird’s nest than ever. I almost smile at him, seeing it. 

But it’s his face I long for most. As I come to stand over him, and he squints up into the shadow I make before the sun, his face is streaked with mud, last night’s rain doing me this lovely favour. I’ve filthied him, turned him like bruised fruit. He frowns up at me, blinking furiously. There’s likely sand in his eyes. How wonderful. He’s lost his glasses, of course. And the stark fresh beauty of his eyes goes unframed, naked and vulnerable and perfectly rotten.

I extend my hand to him. This is the best part. I’ve never had the courage to before, though I’ve yearned for this moment in every dead of every night. His frown falters. What does he see when he blinks up at me like that? I’ve overtaken the sun. I must be all darkness and grace. Does he know it’s Draco Malfoy offering him this mercy? What am I to him in this dazed, broken moment?

An angel, I decide. A shimmering, brutal angel, come to deliver his fate. 

And he takes it, fate and hand both. I’ve never thought this far ahead. I certainly never expected him to… touch me. The leather on our hands sweats, and I feel his fingers grasp me strongly. I engage my muscles and haul him to standing. He rises, and belatedly I realise we’re too close. Much too close. The heat of his breath on my face… the summery stench of crushed grass… whatever small injury I’ve inflicted on him, he wears like a badge. I can never, ever ruin him, and we both know it. He looks into my eyes. I try to let go of his hand, but he doesn’t let me. He leans in, aiming, I think, for the flutter of pulse he must see in my pathetic neck, my blood like Veratiserum running through my veins. But his lips hover at my ear instead, and he says, lowly, casually, “Thanks, love.”

He stays there, breathing shallowly against the shell of my ear until I think I may faint dead away from the horror of it. Then his thumb strokes once over my knuckles, and he drops my hand, a thing no longer wanted. Though he calls over his shoulder as he walks away, “You owe me a broom, Malfoy.”

I watch him, limping a little, as he joins his team by the broom shed. They still love him. Of course they do. He could lose every match, and it wouldn’t matter. I feel myself scowling at his back, even as my heart betrays me and gallops after him, a skittishly joyful horse of a heart, all gangly-legged stupidity. Potter’s lips, his breath, his words sit on my shoulder, lean in and whisper to me, over and over again, as though he charmed them to. Which is only my imagination. I think. 

Before he leaves the pitch, he turns, and he catches my eye one last time. His look pierces all the space between us, like an arrow bowed true and quick. It’s not quite a smile on his face, it’s more like a promise. One he’ll enjoy keeping. It flickers over his dirty face, before he turns away and leaves me with the wreckage I havocked, the remnants of him he no longer needs. And I’m a defeated angel, a morose lesser demon of no consequence. Until next time, when I try again.


End file.
